Sin Ho black rice cake - Lai Chau | Famous specialty of Lai Chau Province

Banh chung of the Dao people is also a type of banh chung made from glutinous rice and pork. However, to make this type of banh chung, the glutinous rice will be dyed black. When boiled, the cake has a very uniform and beautiful black color, that’s why the Dao people call it black Chung cake.

To make delicious black rice cakes on Tet holiday, the Dao people have to go deep into the forest to find the leaves of rattan. Indigenous people believe that the rattan tree is one of the medicines to cure infertility, good for digestion, the leaves are very fragrant, so wrapping the cake with wild rattan leaves will both create a delicious taste for the cake and cure it. get sick.

Wild rattan leaves, after being washed, will be boiled and then dried to make them soft and easy to pack. The glutinous rice chosen to pack black Chung cake is a fragrant white glutinous rice that is dyed black with charcoal powder of the Ta Chiem tree, not made from brocade or naturally black glutinous rice as many people think.

Photo: Son Nu Amuikeo

To make delicious black rice cakes, the rice dyeing stage is the most important. If you want to have a beautiful cake color, you must find an old Ta Chiem tree that is dried and burned into charcoal, then ground into a fine powder to dye with fragrant sticky rice.

The most sophisticated stage is to mix Ta Chiem charcoal powder with rice so that the rice grains are black. In addition, before wrapping the cake, the preparation of the cake is also very important. Indigenous people roasted fragrant cardamom, finely pounded it, mixed with pork fat, cut to about a hand long, and then mixed with a little salt to create a rich flavor for the cake.

In addition to delicious pork fat, there must be a little cardamom so that when eating the cake, the neck will not be hot but the stomach will be healthy, not full, not bloated. Black Chung cake on Tet holiday is loved by people not only because of its delicious taste, but also because the cake lasts a long time, until the end of January, the cake brought to the field to eat is still very delicious.

The package of black banh chung is simple, not fussy but requires the ingenuity of the woman. After having enough ingredients, the mothers and sisters will sit together to wrap the cake. Blackened rice is scooped into a ready-made rattan leaf, filled with meat, then wrapped into long cakes, then boiled.

On the night of the 30th New Year, children and grandchildren in the family gather around the red fire to welcome New Year’s Eve, cook a pot of black chung cakes and chat to welcome the new year.

On New Year’s Eve, it’s also the time when the cake is cooked. Adults in the house will pick up delicious banh chung to worship ancestors on Tet holiday. This type of cake has the meaning of praying for prosperity, fullness, a new year full of rice and rice, and the family is warm inside and out.

With its delicious and unique flavor, Banh Chung – a cake with a rustic flavor of the mountains and forests, has contributed to enriching the culinary culture of the Dao Sin Ho people during the New Year holidays.

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